Multiple Strings of Fate
by codyericlee
Summary: She was always out of your reach. Every single time, every lifeline, every minute of your life you have spent protecting her, but always, in the end, something happens and she is ripped away. Gone. Dead. Unfairly stolen. Robbed from you as you attempt, desperately, hopelessly, to try again every time as love laughs at your face.


**Hey, guys! It's Eric again! Just wanted to:**

 **Disclaim that PJO is not mine**

 **Disclaim that the story plot isn't entirely mine**

 **Thank the very special author (SoSaidL) for his story**

 **So, I guess it's up to me to say…..enjoy!**

 **P.S. This is in the perspective of Percy, so basically every "you" is actually me "speaking" to "Percy." And this has nothing to do with the story of PJO.**

* * *

 _She was always out of your reach._

Every single time, every lifeline, every minute of your life you have spent protecting her, but always, in the end, something happens and she is ripped away. Gone. Dead. Unfairly stolen. Robbed from you as you attempt, desperately, hopelessly, to try again every time as love laughs at your face.

Fate likes sadness and misfortune, doesn't it?

Truth be told, you have "lived" again and again, more than you can count—every time she dies you are thrown into another life, another chance, another….timeline, you decide to call it- still as ever determined to save her at any cost. But it never works. It's never enough, in the end.

You don't know how long you've lasted. You've been cycling, every day, every minute, every second you can remember. Sometimes you like to wonder about the logistics of the situation-how possibly you can save her and end this spiral of flame.

Every time the Empire's massacre spreads across the streets like wildfire, leaving pools of red and burning ash that stings your lungs. Every time you try to stop it, you fail. She dies. You restart. The Empire rips through everything mercilessly, meaninglessly, heartlessly.

 **(And so begins the beginning of the end. The last of the timelines. And you, my dear reader, will travel through fate, love and time itself with me. Are you ready?)**

It's not over, you promise yourself. I will not lose. I will not fail. This is not the end.

But as you stand in the darkness, alone, battered, and ripped from everything you have ever cared about—you begin to waver on your resolve, and you start doubting. You are weary down to the core; again and again it feels like the Empire's fire are burning clean through your heart. In the distance you hear the cries of the tormented souls the Empire would mercilessly murder to show its power to the city, to strike fear into possible rebels. You hear the crackle of fire in the distance, gunfire ringing through the night.

Even when you decided there was only one person worth saving-

And then you see her, standing before you. Her hair was lit in red, her face shadowed black in the darkness, and a thousand timelines flash in your head as you look at her. _Annabeth_.

"I'm sorry," you manage to say, tasting blood in your mouth, the sour bitterness almost unnoticeable now, "I'm sorry—"

Although you can't see her features through the darkness, or read her expression, you clearly see the handgun aimed directly at your chest. Your mouth goes dry and you stare at her in disbelief, shock, betrayal.

"No. You're wrong," she says, her hand shaking but voice steeled with determination. " _I'm_ sorry."

And in the moment she fires you realize that you could only surrender. There was nothing you could do. You-

-and then the bullet hit you.

They say your brain has seven minutes left when you die—but the time for you has been lapsed into hopeless eternity, replaying a blinding kaleidoscope of memories too much for your head, ever-changing mindscape of your many lives and experiences-as if this was how fate decided to repay you.

You swore this wasn't the end; but as far as dramatic endings go, isn't this fitting? For her sake you have traveled time and space, suffering every, single, time—and now your journey will end by her hand. Perhaps it is selfish, but you feel that hers was the only fate you can change for the better. Time had took pity and dragged you backwards upon her death, hadn't it? Did that mean you were meant to do something? Time was telling you that her fate was placed on your hands and it was your one duty to preserve it-isn't it?

(What a beautiful lie. But if it really makes you feel better…..)

The pain is searing, all-encompassing—it explodes through your every nerve, and suddenly the world collapses in on itself and you are falling through eternity.

And you just remember.

* * *

 _"There's no other way to do it," Annabeth had insisted, as she led you towards a green hill in your childhood. "You've got to just lie in the grass and look up at the sky and try to find things in the clouds that you see."_

 _At first you had been convinced it was all a silly idea, but she managed to make you go along with it anyway. She had that effect on people—or just you. No bothering with a picnic blanket: she had marched you over to the park after class and stubbornly laid down in the grass. And it's not half as tedious as you thought it would be - not as long as she's having fun, anyway. After all, wasn't that your life?_

 _It seems there's no limit to the things she can see - while you see cotton balls, she points out an umbrella, a person, an orange, a building, a piano -_

 _"I see an angel," Annabeth says, finger waving up at the sky. You follow the line of her gaze, into the sky. "Look," she says, "don't you see it?"_

 _You squint at the cloud she was pointing at, but only see a vaguely triangle shaped blob that was nowhere near an angel._

 _Then your gaze falls on her. Her bright red-gold hair spills out onto the grass, her arm tucked securely under her head. "Come on," she says, looking over at you with a clear blue gaze, "I know you can find it."_

 _"Don't worry," you assure her, "I did."_

 _"I hope you're not saying that just to make me feel better about making you go cloud-watching," she teases._

 _"Of course not," you insist, "I see one, I swear!"_

 _Annabeth is laughing beside you at just how earnest you are, and your vision is tinted golden in the sunlight; in that instant you swear this is heaven._

* * *

 _It was little things, but you should have seen it coming. All of it. It was your fault._

 _Your father insisted you train with firearms, so you could protect yourself. It completely goes over your head that the town is becoming more and more unsafe, that unexplained disappearances are rising, that even the rumor of treason is reason enough for murder, that the Empire's clutch over this town is near-absolute now._

 _Gunshots in the night. You laid awake, eyes wide open, but somehow you thought everything would be all right._

 _Her face, tight and drawn. Her pieces are frenzied now, scary, taking on a new, darker edge, and you find yourself astounded with her finesse on the piano as her skill grows - now her pieces have titles like_ _Light after Dark_ _and_ _Misplaced Hope_ _._

 _"My family wants me to stop playing," she confides in you, "they say that I shouldn't draw attention to myself - attention is bad, isn't it?"_

 _And as much as that is true, you tell her that everything will be all right, that she has nothing to fear._

 _Then the massacre occurs._

* * *

 _They killed everyone in their path._

 _You were in your house with your family when your little sister pointed to the window and screamed. And outside houses were burning into the night, all around you, and you heard the sound of gunshots. Your house didn't seem to be on fire, not yet, but who knew what all this means?_

 _(Later you would grieve for your family, for your sister, for everyone you knew that had fallen that night, but then you hadn't known what their fates were)_

 _(When you think about it now, all you can feel is a burning numbness in your chest)_

 _But you kept running, your feet pounding on the pavement along streets paved with the shadows of burning houses, coughing on acrid smoke from a merciless sky, and you reach her house._

 _Her family was there, but Annabeth was not._

 _(It is only several timelines later that you know they will reliably be killed thirty seconds later by approaching soldiers)._

 _And in that terrible moment you realized she had probably stayed late outside at her adored piano, and found herself caught in the crossfire._

 _You were almost too determined. Her eyes carried a trace of fear as she surveyed your demeanor and noticed your hands shaking._

 _"Something's going to happen," she said. She was always good at reading you, but anyone could have known you were tense, even afraid._

 _You did not answer at first, until you granted her one syllable through clenched teeth._

 _"Yes," you said._

 _"I see," she answered, drumming her fingers on the wooden table worriedly, and you saw her breaths are coming fast and shallow._

 _Those were her last two words. You heard cries of the masses outside, and as you urged her away from the doorway, a spray of bullets came through the window and caught her in the back of the neck and you in the forearm._

 _You were almost too shocked to cry when she crumples to the ground._

 _(Later you try to get Annabeth away from the window, and that time you catch a painful wound in the shoulder that keeps you from guarding her from the soldiers outside. In any case, she dies, and you're left with the taste of horror lingering in your mouth)._

* * *

And so you begin to notice changes in her, through the timelines. Annabeth's eyes became shadowed, warier, and more suspicious. She moved with caution, a type of fast walk—no longer skipping lightheartedly through the sunlight. Everything about her was melting, molding, into something more solid, as if she was being affected by her deaths.

Then somehow you weren't surprised when you see her beside you at the shooting range. Her mouth was set grimly. "Teach me what I need to know," she says, handing you a pistol. You had no choice.

It took several timelines before she became a natural. She could nail targets sometimes better than you could. And it only took a few more for her to spend less time on the piano, before abandoning it. Sometimes you catch her gazing at piano sheets, but her view betrays nothing. No longingness, no love. Her gaze is hard, unreadable, and marble.

And it still, only took a few more before she stopped asking you for advice, or even seeking your company at all.

At first you though this was a positive development. This was she drew less attention to herself, became more battle-weary, became more…..prepared.

But gradually she turned away you completely.

Had it ever mattered? It did not. It never had.

But you rushed after her, again and again, convinced that that was the time she'll turn around and laugh with you at some silly thing, or point out something you'd never noticed before, or start a conversation. It never worked. Until finally you decided that you could only protect her from afar. Clearly she doesn't trust you anymore. (It was only in later timelines you realized that because you were besides her every death, and that that had made her associate you with the destruction and despair and pain in her mind. How terribly ironic.)

Then came the one timeline where she had threatened to kill you, leveled her gun at you, and for the first time you saw the despair written plainly on her face.

Because she believes you are responsible. Every timeline had only strengthened your association with the terror wreaked by the Empire. Finally you had completed your transformation from her beloved childhood friend to the traitor of her nightmares.

Was this her way out of the loop, no matter where it might lead? To kill the only one who was tethered to her existence? Or has she doomed herself to fate by killing the only one who could rewind time for her sake? Or, you think, were you the one catalyst that could gradually change her from a light-hearted pianist to this vengeance-driven fighter? Was this the only way she could be saved, even if it meant that you could never have her, but for her to try herself? You would never know.

Seven minutes.

Just seven minutes. Only seven minutes.

They were never long enough.

* * *

 _ **Epilogue: The Warrior that Loved Once**_

Annabeth races down the side-streets of the town, taking care to keep to the shadows of the fiery flames licking buildings to ashes.

Along her way she notices a moving figure: a young boy, isolated from his family. _Likely they're dead_ , she thinks bitterly. She stops beside him, places a finger to her lips, and lets him run alongside her on the route to escape. He is quiet and does not say a word.

They're nearly caught several times, but her instincts serve her well-as well as her willingness to kill anyone in her path-and they make it to a neighboring city with only minor wounds. She suspects that had one thing gone differently she would have easily found herself dead.

Right after she fled, Empire soldiers began closing in, sweeping over the town to eliminate survivors, and she escaped her certain demise by mere seconds to spare.

The Emperor's orders were to kill every last townsperson present, to show their might to the rest of their lands. She will not know until two years later, when she joins the Resistance, that they were the only two to escape the town alive.

Her quest for retribution burns fiercely within her, fueling her and propelling her to fight against the all-encompassing wrath of the Empire, and to make them pay to everything they had destroyed. Meanwhile, the young boy she has rescued has become a skilled archer under the training of the Resistance. Like her, he kills mercilessly- it's kill or be killed.

But in Annabeth's dreams she suffers every horror imaginable, every terror she could possibly dream up in her head. She falls from an arrow to the heart, from a bullet to the head, to fire consuming her body, a sword through the neck, dagger in the stomach. It is as if she endures the pain of death countless times over in order to serve as the assassin she has become; as if, for every death she inflicts, she must feel the resulting agony, living every death.

Throughout it all she sees his face. The traitor, Percy Jackson. The one who had fallen by her hand. It had been his death that sparked her quest, her unrelenting drive to see the Empire decimated to nothing. He speaks her name, again and again, and she wakes up in a cold sweat, biting back the scream on her lips.

He had loved her, hadn't he? A cold and ruthless love, driven to destroy everything in its path. A type of love that the Empire had destroyed. They would pay.

The signs were only too obvious, and she only wishes she had acted upon her doubts sooner.

Meanwhile she gradually ascends through the ranks of the Resistance, rising above the leaders themselves. She was strategic, tactical, smart, witty. "We can't take them in a full-on fight, she says, "but the people we've got are talented, dedicated, and resourceful. Let's kill them from within." And so she devises a series of attacks that hold no rule, no thing, as sacred-showing the rebels they were; rather than fight their troops, she organizes that they be fatally poisoned and manages to blame the entire "mishap" on the Emperor's favorite chef. Rather than declare their presence to the Emperor himself, she advocates that they arrange for several "accidents" to happen to his closest advisors. Slowly weaken the web of power until the structure is barely standing. Let them think the Resistance is harmless, let them keep their guard down, until it is much, much too late.

Everything is fair, she says, in war, and she finds her fellow leaders nodding in agreement.

(Never mind love: her heart has already been broken and she suspects there is nothing left)

Her smile is not a smile: it is grim, calculating, almost emotionless. Even before the Resistance becomes well-known, her strategies have already paved the way for their victory.

Their battle is over before it has begun. They do not storm the palace; no, they merely arrange for a fatal gas leak in the throne room during a royal policy meeting, lock the doors, and kill everyone within. Two nights later she arrives herself and sees the Emperor lying dead on his throne, his glassy eyes staring terrified into empty space, amid his equally terrified remaining generals and executives.

"Victory," she says aloud, and her voice feels hollow. "We have achieved victory. The Empire is in shambles."

(At what cost, the traitor whispers in her dreams, that night, at what cost?)

The last high-rank is the Royal Secretary (he had survived, having been home sick that day). She lets him speak before he is killed as well; they can have no one left from the Empire if they are to begin a new era. Kill or be killed.

"I come from the first town you massacred," she says, letting him feel the pain that echoes through her every syllable, staring into his eyes. "I saw what the Empire did to innocents. I know that you converted innocent townspeople to the side of the Empire, using our own against us-"

"-No," he interrupts, genuinely surprised, "we never did that. The orders were to kill _everyone_."

She says the traitor's name. _Percy Jackson._ There is no tremor in her voice, and she is proud of that. "He worked for you," she says firmly, steeling her resolve.

"No," the secretary says. She can tell he's terrified, she could tell; at one glance from her, he begins speaking as fast as he can. "We were expressly ordered _not_ to leave anyone. Spare no one. I do remember his name though. He was on a memo I read while we were planning the...attack. One of our officers noticed his combat skill, and thought he might be difficult to deal with, so he was put on our priority list."

She can say nothing. She's shaking, her palms cold...her head is swimming. In shame, doubt, pity...

* * *

That night she dreams again of the traitor. (He is no traitor. Not anymore). His hands are covered in blood, but it is his own. He has collapsed to his knees, coughing up blood. The red blended in almost perfectly against the dreamscape.

"Forgive me," she says. And as she clutches his hands, inexplicably, images and memories and experiences flash through her mind. More than could possibly belong to one lifetime, an entire spectrum of them, from every end of the world, from ever timeline, from every life and love. Suddenly she knows that she had trusted him completely once, as a best friend and a lover. She remembered the aching pleasure that she had when she played and practiced the piano for him until her fingers bled. And somehow, these memories extended to lighter, peaceful days. Then came the memories of black and fiery red, in the confusing midst of confessions, lies, hope, love. Horrible scenes every time. Countless deaths. He had been there too, his face etched in red and gold in the shadows of the flames, but he had never been the one responsible for her pain. She doesn't know how it's possible for her to understand all of this so fully, so suddenly, nor how it's possible; she only knows that somehow, somewhere, all of this must have been true.

And so she clutches his hands in hers still more tightly, the hands of a dying man who will haunt her dreams for the rest of her life.

"Forgive me," she hears herself saying, the words at once foreign and achingly familiar. "I think I loved you, once."


End file.
